Texas Rattlers baseball team wins state tournament

Steve Love

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The 12 and under team competed in a series of games Nov. 6-7, ultimately getting their final win against Texas Tide, 10-3. Pitching coach Kevin Hagen said the Rattlers went into the final match with confidence.

"[The Tide] had a 6-footer pitching to our 4'10" kids and they were undaunted by it," he said. "They all just slapped him around, basically. It was one of those good days where you woke up and you knew everything was going to go your way."

However, to get to that day, they first had to go through what seemed like one of their darkest nights. In the state qualifier the day before, Hagen said they played two frustrating games that both resulted in ties. They had gone in hoping to show both teams that the Rattlers were the best but just ran out of steam too soon, and it really stung.

"So we go home and we're all depressed and whining and crying like a bunch of little sissies," Hagen said, "and we look at the Web site anyway even though, in our minds, we've already decided we're out of it."

Teams get one point for a win and half a point for a tie. When the points were tallied up, the Rattlers were tied with a team who had gone 1-1 in the tournament. But then someone realized that, in a tie, the winner is the team with the fewest runs allowed. Hagen said it turned out they allowed far fewer runs than the other team. Later that night, the coaches called the team with the good news that they had just squeezed their way in.

The next morning, they fought their way through their first two games, including a game against the No.1 seeded team who had been crushing everyone else in the tournament.

"And then we get to the championship game against the Tide," Hagen said. "Everybody knows who the Tide is. They're taller than we are on top of each other. I don't know what they're feeding these kids, but they're huge."

Defense coach Jay Davis said the Rattlers are now ranked No. 2 in Texas and No. 6 in the nation. The players are absolutely pumped about that. Much of their success is owed to the fact that the team works hard and makes an effort to get better.

"They practice at least once a week," said bench coach Peter Vogels, "but they practice their hitting and pitching by themselves quite often, because they're a very dedicated group."

The Rattlers, who are a Spring/Klein-area team, played seven tournaments during the summer and fall season, including many games against teams from other divisions and higher classifications. Defense coach Jay Davis said they'll do that in order to give the players more experience.

"We played in a couple Little League tournaments around town, which have a different set of rules, but we wanted them to play against kids who've seen tougher competition," Davis said.

They'll continue to use that strategy in 2005, playing tougher teams as well as some at-level games in order to keep the team sharp and excited about winning. Davis said they use their league games for experimentation and rotating the players around different positions on the field.

"League ball's been a good practice ground for us," he said. "When you go into a tournament, such as the state tournament, where you have to win so many games on the final day, you have to move people around and being able to shuffle people to different positions and not lose a beat … is a big asset to us."

Everyone on the team has had a great experience in the league, and Davis credits that to the Spring/Klein sports program, which he said has been a good training ground.

Manager Glenn Lusk said the team came to the Spring/Klein area after struggling in the Northwest 45 league. Making the switch was one of the best moves they could have made.

"Without going over there, we wouldn't have picked up some great ball players," Lusk said. "There's some good little ball players that come out of Spring/Klein."

Lusk said it took all 11 players to win the tournament and they all made contributions. When it became clear they were going to win, the tournament director approached him and said he'd have to pick an MVP. He said that was a tough decision and tried turning it over to the parents. They didn't want to choose one either and suggested having the team choose.

"Well, I didn't want that to happen so I made the decision, without anybody knowing, that we were not going to make an MVP out of this tournament," Lusk said. "We were gonna give it a team MVP. To me, that's the highlight of the tournament because it lets the boys know that it took every one of them."

The Texas Rattlers will continue practicing for the spring season and, as the winners of the national qualifier in Texas, will accept a berth in the national championship in July.